


A Certain Trust

by DannyAnne



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, No Romance, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers-centric, kind of anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:05:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5899306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyAnne/pseuds/DannyAnne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is happening in SHIELD and Steve is determined to find out what it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Begin.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a finished commission that I will be posting in chapters. If you're interested in contacting me for a commission, please check out my information on worldoftygers.tumblr.com :)

There was a certain kind of distrust that grew from being surrounded by war. It rooted itself in the mind and blossomed into something gross and insatiable. Every memory tainted with betrayal served as a reservoir, feeding the feeling as it grew.

Steve Rogers had tried to pride himself in keeping that feeling in check. He had spent long afternoons in his quiet apartment, trimming back the vines from around his neck and chest, making sure they didn’t strangle him and his sense of the world. If that led to days in the dark with the curtains drawn, deep breaths his only sense of accomplishment, then it was worth it in the end. Because if he set aside those days, if he took that time and he used it, then he could step outside the next day, walk down halls and participate in meetings, and not feel (or at least feel a little less) the sinking feeling that came with every sideways glance.

He did that now, moving down the sidewalk with his cell phone pressed to his ear. Maria was relaying the schedule to him as she always did every Monday. What had been decided over the weekend, what would unfold the following days, what they would try to decide the next weekend. It gave Steve a sense of control and eliminated the element of surprise.

“There’s some new tech that Fury wants to show off to you,” Maria said.

This kind of invitation wasn’t completely unusual. Steve had grown used to it. He even clung to it on some days. It gave Fury a disconnect from his usual nothing but business persona. It was an inconsistency, this excitement to show Steve his new toys, that didn’t match up with his otherwise do what he may attitude.

“When?”

“He said somewhere in the middle of the week,” Maria said, “but, knowing him, he’ll bring you in as soon as he sees you today.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Steve said.

“How are you today?” Maria asked after a pause. It was the familiar signal that work was done and the personal chatter could now begin.

“Good,” Steve said. “Coffee shop was way too crowded this morning.”

“I can have something ready for you when you get here.”

“That’s okay.” And it was. It wasn’t the caffeine that he needed. It was mainly just the routine. He always felt a little lost without one. It was the reasoning behind his daily trek to SHIELD. He had just about no business there, but it felt like progress if he showed up on a regular basis, established work and personal relationships, and repeated the process.

Steve ended his phone call with Maria when he got to the subway entrance. He would take his usual connection as far as he could before walking the final distance to Triskelion. It was a hell of a trek, but it made the higher ups less angry than taking a taxi to the front door.

If there was an environment Steve had grown accustomed to, it was rainy and dim. The complete opposite of the inside of Triskelion. This building was towering, the majority of the walls constructed of windows. It was almost entirely see-through, a comment on irony if Steve ever saw one.

He was greeted at the front desk by a newly hired receptionist. He held up the ID card he had been issued. It wasn’t official. It was stamped as temporary. They didn’t trust even him to have permanent access.

The receptionist scrutinized the ID picture for only a split second before nodding him forward. He swiped the same card across a scanner and pushed past the turnstile.

Maria was waiting for him on the communication level. Despite his earlier reassurance, she had, in fact, made sure there was a cup of coffee ready for him when he got there.

He sipped from the warm cup. “Is Natasha still not back?”

“No,” Maria said. “She’s not scheduled for return until late this week.”

Steve was rotating his eyes around the room as she spoke to him. He wasn’t particularly concerned about Natasha’s return. It wasn’t the first time she slipped away without a word and it wouldn’t be the last time she slipped back home without acknowledgement of what she had been doing.

“Did you hire new people?” Steve asked absently.

“Yeah,” Maria answered, “they just finished the screening process. Poor things. Anyway,” she nodded towards the elevator across the room, “Fury awaits.”

Steve nodded a thanks to Maria and moved towards the elevator. It sped upwards, carrying him to one of the top levels where Fury’s office was situated. Fury was waiting for him there.

When Steve entered his office, Fury was already sweeping papers back into folders.

“Busy these days?” Steve asked. It was a reference both to the stacks of papers that Fury was quickly putting back in place as well as the recent lack of direct communication between the two of them. It used to be that Fury would call on Steve’s presence every other day. This was the first time Steve had seen the director in almost a month. Somehow, he didn’t seem as put together at Steve remembered him always being.

“Something like that,” Fury said. He swept up the last few papers. Files with stapled photographs from what Steve could see of them before they were gone, hidden behind a thin manila wall. They reminded him of the records that were kept of him and other soldiers before everything was digitalized. The new additions to the SHIELD team, he thought.

“Maria said you had something to show off,” Steve said. He rocked back on his heels just slightly. “The first in a while. I assume it’s something good.”

Fury lined up his stack of files and dropped them in a drawer on his desk, locked it, and stood. “You’ll like it.”

Fury led Steve to the door, held it open, and watched as he left.


	2. Two.

SHIELD functioned on high security. There was a network of codes surrounding every base of operations. No door opened without the proper access codes, the correct identification. On top of that, the board of security operation selected people, mainly those already involved in government agencies, to be established as security guards. Nobody got in with just a resume and a list of references. Everyone was checked, screened, tested, re-checked, and re-tested. It was a rigorous process that could take months depending on how each test and re-test went. No metaphorical stone was to be left unturned.

Casey Way’s file was on the bottom of the latest recruits for SHIELD security. She had always been the last in every list of names in her life. From elementary school to college, class role and interview sessions always ended with the W’s. There had been a class her Junior year of university in which some unlucky soul had been born to the Zent family. She had spent the entire semester in a fragile state of contentment.

But, for every test that SHIELD threw at her, she was the final candidate to have her chance.

When she was finally admitted, her pass card was stamped for access to the Bottom Zone of Triskelion. File and scrap storage. She would roam the darkened hallways and rooms, checking for misplaced paperwork and tools, running perimeter along the halls and the elevators that were only ever used when the reject weapons and forgotten projects piled too high to be ignored. Then they were rushed down in loads for the Bottom Zone workers to sort through.

Casey didn’t normally talk to the workers down here. She suspected their contentment with their current job was on a timer. No need to speed it up.

On the day Director Fury pulled Steve Rogers down to the levels just above the Bottom Zones, Casey was beating a path along the last rows of one of the file rooms. Loads of to-be-organized information had already been delivered today and she was helping to collect any and all of the empty containers that were left behind.

Her flashlight skimmed along the tiled floor in front of here, flashing over cracks and dark spots of old dried gum.

When she rounded a corner, her foot collided with a half empty container, throwing it across the floor and into a shelf. Casey let out a yelp and pulled back, swinging her flashlight directly into the eyes of one of the workers.

“Sorry!” the worker responded immediately. They were already diving to retrieve the plastic box and gather their dropped files.

Casey let out a hard, nervous laugh. “My fault,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She flicked off her flashlight, snapped it back to her belt, and bent to help gather the papers. “Are they still giving us files from back here?” she asked when she decided her attempted aid was only getting in the way.

The worker, a young woman with tied back hair, re-checked the file in her hand and finally looked up at Casey. “Yes,” she said.

Casey hesitated. It felt awkward. She hadn’t expected a straight answer. It had been more of a joke than a request of information. “Um, alright. I guess I’ll let you get back to it then.”

Before Casey could make it halfway down the aisle, the woman stopped her. “I’m sorry,” she said. And, when Casey turned back to acknowledge her, she continued, “that was rude of me.” She seemed to hesitate too, then. “If you wouldn’t mind, I could actually use some help finding where some of these go.”

Casey glanced at the almost empty box and then at the girl. There weren’t that many files and it didn’t seem like it would exactly be bad company. Despite the other countless empty containers calling her name, Casey shrugged a shoulder and backtracked towards the woman. 

“Sure. Why not?”

She grabbed a file from the box, flipped it over, checked the tab, and immediately knew they were in the wrong section.

“This is labeled for at least ten rows down that way,” Casey said. She looked up at the woman. “What did you say your name was again?”


	3. Three.

“What are you working on?” Steve asked Maria on Wednesday. They were sitting in a warmly lit café a few blocks down the road from Triskelion.

Maria sat across from him. She was dressed casual, if Maria could ever be considered to do anything casual. Her laptop was tilted open, eyes flying across the screen from left to right at a speed that worried Steve only slightly. How could she possibly be catching every word on the page?

When he spoke, her eyes moved, without hesitation, to his face. As absorbed as Maria could be and always would be in her work, she always gave her full attention to everyone around her when they asked for it. “Just a few small bumps in the system,” she said.

“Bumps?” Steve pushed.

“Security things, mainly,” Maria said. “Possible leaks that aren’t actually leaks yet. Possible mishandlings of files in the Bottom Zone.”

Steve didn’t know how much danger he was supposed to be detecting in Maria’s tone. She seemed at ease. Her shoulders weren’t tense. Her eyes were still on Steve; whatever was on her screen wasn’t dragging her back to it with screaming importance.

“You’re not on high security alert? No red sirens?”

Maria just barely lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We’re always on high security alert.” Her eyes flicked back to him for a moment. “Technically speaking.”

“Technically speaking,” Steve repeated.

The thought didn’t return to him until Friday. And then it was persistent. He had never been to the Bottom Zone before. It was a loving nickname that had already been assigned to the basement levels at Triskelion. By the time Steve had showed up, there was nothing he could do but accept the name and go about his business with only bits and pieces of gossip and casual description to build an image from.

In his mind, it was a winding corridor of dusty shelves filled to the brim with countless contents. Files and scrap metal and boxes of here and there failures. Things SHIELD didn’t particularly care about anymore, but were too sensitive to just toss out or maybe just barely holding enough potential to be brought back to the top levels and revived.

That image wasn’t too far off from the real thing. When the elevator door slid open, it was on an empty hallway. The first impression was cold and all around unwelcoming. The floors weren’t dirty, but they were uncared for and practically in ruins compared to the pristine tiles of the upper floors and the vacuumed twice a day carpets of the office spaces on the top levels. Doors were dotted down the walls at random intervals, no clear method of construction obvious. Except, possibly, more doors meaning more space.

Steve measured his steps as he walked down the hall, peering at the labels installed next to the doors. They ran by date. The oldest dates were closest to the elevator. Below the printed dates were lists of contents. Rejected projects, outdated projects, broken projects. The ones that added miscellaneous to the lists caught Steve’s eye. He had a hard time believing SHIELD would label anything as “miscellaneous”.

He opened a door labeled with only miscellaneous contents. It creaked just slightly.

Inside the room, there was a faint hum of air conditioning, though the temperature didn’t seem to shift all that drastically. There were walls of shelves spread throughout the room. Most of them held boxes, taped closed and placed in lines. A few of them held stacks of files. None of them were completely full.

Steve’s steps echoed just slightly against the walls and floor. He began to walk the perimeter of the room, gazing down each aisle as he passed.

He briefly wondered where any of the workers were. Were they in different rooms, scattered around without direction? Or all huddled in one room, content to believe that nobody would come down this far just to make sure they were being productive? Steve thought that last notion sounded a bit like heaven.

As he made it to the end of the room and turned to walk to the other side, he tried to work out in his head how he could dig into what Maria had mentioned. She had downplayed it, said it wasn’t even a threat yet. But something about a security leak from inside SHIELD made chills run down Steve’s neck. A break in the unbreakable.

But at this rate? With as many rooms as there were and as many shelves as he was sure were in each and every one? Where was he even supposed to begin working out where and why files had been misplaced? He could ask Maria. He could poke and prod and question the subject until she got suspicious. He could tell her he was just interested, just looking for something to occupy his thoughts while he waited for something a little more exciting, a little more, as Fury would often put it, “Red White and Blue Worthy”.

But she would shut him down and he knew it.

He turned right again and made his way back towards the center of the room and then along the other half that he had not yet pursued. Somewhere along the middle of these new aisles, a flashlight beamed into his eyes.

Steve winced and pulled back, throwing a hand up to cover his face. He squinted past it and the light behind it. The light tilted downwards slightly and a woman stared him down.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked.

Steve dropped his eyes from her face to her badge to the rest of her uniform. She was a security guard.

“Looking,” Steve said lamely.

The flashlight clicked off. It remained in the woman’s hand. Steve saw her nametag said C. Way.

“Looking,” she repeated.

Steve didn’t know what else to say. With the silence and the half emptiness, he hadn’t expected to see anyone else roaming the aisles, let alone an armed someone.  
There was a stretch of silence. C. Way didn’t look like she was going to budge.

Steve thought fast.

“Files,” he said. “Maria Hill sent me down to check for some misplaced files.”

Another stretch of silence.

She stared at Steve. Her eyes dropped once, looking him over, then returned to his face. Her jaw shifted. Steve imagined her biting her tongue in thought in the same way he used to chew the inside of his lip while he scratched pen and pencil against paper.

C. Way slipped her flashlight back into its holster. “What sort of files?” she asked. The shift in her voice was almost tangible. She had moved so quickly from defensive, perimeters breached security guard to helpful, cooperative authority.

Steve bristled. He stepped carefully, testing the waters.

“Recent ones,” he said. “They’ve gone missing.”

“You mentioned that,” she said. “Didn’t this Maria Hill give you any names? Dates? Catalogue codes?”

Something struck a cord in Steve. Everyone knew Maria. She was half the building’s go to when it came to any sort of issue. She was up for the next head of security promotion.

“Sure,” he said. He made an effort to look cheerful and only mildly inconvenienced.

He slipped a hand into his empty back pocket, sliding his right foot backward with the same motion.

The security guard was faster.

Steve’s cheek hit the edge of a shelf with force. His shoulder ached as his arm was twisted behind his back, bent at a painful angle. The woman’s hand was tight on his wrist. He could hear the metal jingle of the linking chain of handcuffs.

“Alright,” she was saying. Steve was paying more attention to every move in his mental catalogue than to her speech. “Just calm down and stay still.”

Steve made himself relax, waiting for her to shift. When it happened, when her fingers twitched, moving to make room for one of the cold rings in her other hand, Steve pushed away from the shelf, shoving her backwards until her back collided with the shelves on the other side of them.

There was a violent rattling, a few flutters as papers fell to the ground, knocked loose by the impact.

She was only barely fazed, letting out a grunt before reaching her hand over Steve’s shoulder to get a handle on the fabric of his shirt, nails trying to dig in past the cotton to the skin below.

He spun quickly, shaking her off and tossing her away from him with as much force as he could. “Just trying to do my job,” he said.

“So am I,” she said.

“You’re lousy at it.”

He was close enough to the end of the aisle. He jumped back, spun around the corner to the next aisle, and sprinted for the end of it. The door was to his right. He skidded to a quick stop, just enough to reorient himself, and ran, taking a handful of steps before pushing the door open.

Outside the room, his eyes went immediately to the end of the hallway where he had come from. Only elevators. If there were stairs somewhere, it would take too long to find them.

He moved towards the elevator. If there was an emergency button, he could push it. It might send the entire building into a panic, but, at this point, it would probably be a warranted panic.

He flew into the elevator, his back landing painfully against the glass of it. His hand left a smudge on the smooth surface as he steadied himself.

The hallway he had just dashed down was empty and stayed empty until he mashed a finger on to the close doors button. 

Steve listened to his own breath. He ran a finger over a number of floor level buttons. Right now, it didn’t matter where he went, as long as it was away from the Bottom Zone and whatever the hell was happening down there.


	4. Four.

Maria watched Steve. She sat and she watched him. Her eyes flicked around his face, looking at his his rapid moving mouth, his eyebrows scrunched over his eyes, creases digging into the skin of his forehead. Then she pushed a breath out of her nose, dropped her shoulders, leaned back, and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Steve didn’t say anything. His mouth had stopped forming around his story, his eyebrows were still scrunched, his forehead still wrinkled.

Maria leaned forward and scratched at her head. “Look,” she said, “I understand your concern. And the files, however really _really_ unimportant they are—I cannot stress that enough, Steve,” she splayed a hand in the air as if to caution Steve, “don’t you think she was maybe just doing her job?”

“She didn’t know you,” Steve said. “Everyone knows you.”

There was something like vines squeezing his throat.

Maria smiled in a way that reminded Steve of his own mother. “I may be a superhero to you, but not everyone in SHIELD knows who I am. Far from it, actually.” She reached for the tablet that she had dropped on the couch cushion beside her. Her fingers tapped and flourished across the screen. “Besides, she’s new.”

Maria turned the tablet for Steve to see. On the screen was the woman that had attacked him. Her profile read Casey Anne Way. New recruit. Security duty. Supervised by Officer Ryan Gene Free.

“What does she do down there?” Steve asked.

Maria let out another breath, this one more audible, and dropped the tablet into the bag at her feet. “She patrols her section of rooms, helps where she can, busts snoops like you.”

Steve dug his toes into his carpeted floor. He bit the inside of his lip.

“Look, Steve,” Maria said, “if Fury finds out I mentioned something about an under investigation security risk to you and that it made you go crazy about one little over aggressive security guard—who hasn’t even reported anything about you skulking around, by the way—it’s going to be _my_ ass on the line.” She softened a little. “And don’t think you won’t get any shit. You may be tough, but you’re not indestructible. As much as he hates to admit it, even Fury knows that.” She stood. “How about you try to forget it, leave the investigation to us, and enjoy your weekend?” She briefly dropped a hand onto his shoulder as she walked towards her shoes and the door. “You’ll feel better if you just chill out, I promise.”

She was gone for an hour before Steve picked up the phone and dialed.

“What’s up, Star Spangled Banner?”

“Tasha. Hi.”

Natasha’s end was loud. Background noise matched her voice in volume. Before Steve could say anything else besides his greeting, though, it began to fade and then became muffled.

“Busy?” Steve asked.

“Not particularly,” Natasha said. “Barton and Kate are just having a good old time in front of the TV. How’s your schedule?”

“Full of surprises.”

Steve filled her in on what had happened. He tentatively left out his discussion with Maria. The encounter was still fresh and Natasha’s decision still unknown territory. Natasha stayed silent throughout the entire explanation.

Then she said, “you think SHIELD is about to blow.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well you sure as hell sound pretty panicked about it. The guard is definitely off.”

Steve felt a little relief, a little ease of breath. It was good to hear someone tell you you’re right. Even if it was about a possible mole in one of the largest underground government operations in the world.

“So what do you want to do about it?” Natasha asked.

“You want to do something?”

“You do too. If you didn’t want to make some sort of move, then you wouldn’t have called. So what do you want to do?”

There was even less question in Natasha’s voice when she was standing in Steve’s apartment, elbows resting on the stone counter, eyes fixed on Steve. “I’m not suggesting a guns blazing first move forward march type of deal,” she said. “I’m just suggesting that it’s not a bad idea to keep digging.”

“Going back down there?” Steve asked.

“No,” Natasha said immediately. “Not unless you know what you’re looking for.”

“I could try to get Maria to give me more information.”

Natasha rested her chin in one hand. “Alright,” she said. “You’re on Hill duty. I’ll see what I can tell from asking around.”

So Steve brought it up again to Maria. He spent half the day trying to think of how to do it. When the day was almost over, the sun already beginning to touch the horizon outside, Steve dropped his caution and spoke.

“What files went missing?”

Maria was tense immediately. Her muscles went tight. Her eyes focused on Steve. The look in them was a little jarring. He was starting to regret having opened his mouth.

“I thought you were going to drop this,” she said. “for my sake.” Her eyes moved back to her screen and stayed there.

“I just want to know,” Steve said, watching Maria watch her screen. Her jaw was tense. “There were a lot of rooms down there.”

“Hence it being so easy for things to get lost. Drop it, Captain.”

For a while, Steve didn’t say anything. Then, “consider it dropped.”

Maria continued to stare at her screen.

That night, Natasha was making herself busy in Steve’s kitchen. She cracked open a Pepsi and trashed the wrapper from a popsicle. Snapping the top of the frozen fruit flavored ice cream, she took a seat on the counter of the bar.

“You don’t think she’s…hiding something, do you?” Steve asked.

“Most definitely,” Natasha said.

Steve’s stomach sank. “Great.”

“Well,” Natasha began. She bit off another, smaller piece of the popsicle. “She at least wasn’t herself today.”

“So,” Steve said, “the only thing I managed to find today is a way to piss off Maria. What did you find?”

“A lot of people not being themselves, actually,” Natasha said. She swallowed her bite of popsicle and continued. “At least, that’s what their friends said. All I had to do was slip in a ‘have you _seen_ Jen lately?’ and it was suddenly all about how no they absolutely had not but Greg was completely unbearable as of late.” She pointed her half eaten popsicle at Steve. “Did you know that Michael is even thinking about requesting a transfer to the _Bottom Zone_?” Her popsicle returned to her mouth. “Crazy.”

“New recruits don’t like their new jobs?” Steve said.

There was something about what Natasha said that made him want to reject everything he had thought the past few days, every suggestion he had made to Maria. Something that multiplied itself each time he remembered the look in Maria’s eyes.

“It’s not an absurd thought,” Natasha said with a shrug.

She worked on finishing her popsicle while Steve sat silent.

“What if it’s more serious, though?” he asked. The words came slowly, the thoughts inching to the front of his mind. He didn’t want them there, but they came anyway, weighing him down until he felt them like a headache. “What if something is happening to them?”

Natasha was chewing on her empty popsicle stick now. She kept her eyes on him and worked the wood between her teeth. “You think SHIELD has been compromised.”

Not a question. A demand, Steve thought. _Give me an explanation_ , her words were saying. _Tell me why and tell me how_.

Steve didn’t think he had the answer to either of those. All he knew was his thoughts were spreading across his mind like slow water leaking across a floor, seeping into every crack and seam along the way.

“People are changing. Not a lot, but enough for it to be…weird.” The vines wrapped themselves around his throat, across his chest. His skin felt tight. “The security guard, Casey. Hostile, aggressive, violent. The people you heard about. Their friends are worried.” He took a breath, forced the air through his tight throat. “Maria.”

Steve felt unsteady. He tilted forward, pressed his arms across the metal back of the bar stool and leaned there for a moment, let the weight sink across his shoulders, bend his neck until his head dropped just slightly.

Natasha’s popsicle stick snapped in half.

“So we help them,” she said. “We change them back.” Steve looked up. “And, in the process, stop whatever’s happening in SHIELD,” she said.

Help, Steve thought. There was that word again. But it felt more secure this time.

Natasha slid off the counter and walked to the trash can in the kitchen area. “I’m going to contact Barton,” she said.

The trash lid snapped shut and so did Steve’s jaw. So did every thought of exploring this territory with Natasha. It felt vaguely like choking when he spoke. “We should stay small. We should stay secret.”

Natasha remained strong. Her posture was suddenly rigid. She did not choke when she spoke. “I trust Barton. You should too.”

The word felt cold. Trust. In this situation, they should both be doing as little trusting as possible.

The trust between her and him, it was already there, already established and built upon. They knew each other’s basic ticks. Any and every red flag would be obvious. He knew Clint, but he, by far, didn’t _know_ him. Not the way Natasha did. Not the way years of side by side near death experience buys you. Not like he had, a long time ago, known Bucky.

Steve stared at Natasha then, the way her shoulders were straight, her eyes and stance unwavering. It was something close to a fighting stance.

“Okay,” he conceded. “Okay.”


	5. Five.

Clint Barton arrived before the week ended. He was tired and full of coffee and just about miserable.

“The only thing she said was that it was an emergency,” Clint said when Steve opened his apartment door.

Clint slipped past him, luggage in hand. “Kate has her own plans,” Clint continued. He dropped his things on the couch. “Sure, New York is crawling with dog sitters, but are any of them available at any point in time within the next century? Are any of them less expensive than a Beverly Hills mansion?” He turned to face Steve, pausing as if expecting an answer. Steve blinked. “The answer is no, Cap,” Clint said. Paused. “Loosely, anyway.” He turned back to his things.

“Anyway, Natasha said it was important so now here I am, crashing at your apartment because she said she was busy.” He threw air quotes around ‘busy’ like he was bitter. “Do you have any coffee?” he asked.

The heavy scent of coffee had just started to fade by the time Natasha arrived. She jumped right in.

“First things first,” she said, plopping down onto the couch, “we have to be honest with ourselves: we have no clue what we’re looking at with this.” She looked at Steve. “Cap here has some ideas, but they’re guesses at best. Luckily, asking politely is not the only way to obtain withheld information. So here’s the full scope of what’s gone missing.”

As Natasha listed names of projects that had long gone extinct, projects that she described as too risky for even SHIELD to complete and implement, Steve had a gnawing feeling in his gut. Natasha continued to speak, and as each word fell from her lips, Steve felt like he was being lowered into a deep hole, inch by inch.

“Sounds like a full blown threat to me,” Clint said. “You know what I think we should do.” He made a motion with his hands as if shooting a bow, once at Natasha and again at Steve. “Do ‘em in. Easy as that.”

“One of them could be Maria,” Steve said flatly.

Clint blinked and then mimed putting his imaginary bow away. “Okay. No dice. Also easy.”

“Not so easy,” Natasha countered. “We know what they have, but not why they have them. Or how. Which, admittedly, isn’t as important.”

“Trace these people to a common source,” Clint said.

“Find out if there’s a single person all of them have recently had contact with?” Steve suggested.

“Look for higher ups,” Natasha said, nodding along with the words. “That’s the immediate response. It’s a bit difficult to do without attracting attention, though. I can’t just surf through SHIELD’s library of employee records and make a pen and paper list of everyone’s supervisors. It’d be obvious and also completely look like a hit list.”

“Save it for later,” Clint said with a snorted laugh.

“We can spread it out,” Natasha said, ignoring the comment. Her tone suggested she was thinking out loud at this point. “We all take parts of the list, pick random days when we look through the records, get them to talk about their bosses. Memorize familiar names, don’t write them down.”

“Simple enough,” Steve said. He was beginning to feel restless.

Steve felt even more restless as they executed the plan. It was mostly waiting, attempting to make every push of information seem random and unplanned. A difficult thing to do considering every move they made had been discussed ahead of time. Steve felt stilted in every conversation he had. He took to carrying around hot cups of coffee to warm his hands and calm his nerves. His hands appreciated the occupation, even when the drink went cold.

After each day of collecting information, all three of them came back to Steve’s apartment and worked through what they had heard. A few names came up multiple times. A supervisor named Jonathan Garrus wasn’t anyone’s favorite person. He came from military background and was beyond strict. Something SHIELD surely appreciated, but the secretaries and coffee runners did not. Ryan Free, the supervisor for security in the lower levels. Also military trained, but he worked beside Annalise May and both of them mostly came up in positive comments. Especially Annalise, though she had been out on sick leave the past few days.

After a week and a half of work, these were the three names they had to work with.

Clint favored May as either the head of everything or, at the very least, severely affected by it. “She’s been out for a long time,” he said.

“That doesn’t have to mean she's connected,” Natasha countered.

“It means _something_ , though” Clint said.

“Sure,” Steve said, “but that something doesn’t have to be involved with this. It could just mean she’s sick. What about Garrus? Nobody liked him.”

“But if people aren’t acting like they usually do,” Natasha said, “can we trust their personal opinions on people right now?”

“Wouldn’t they try to act like their relationships are the same?” Clint asked. “Why blow their cover just to make a few snide comments?”

“Because it would help frame an innocent person,” Steve said. “Then the real culprit could get away with whatever they wanted and let someone else take the blame.”

“That’s putting a lot of trust in pure oversight. Especially within an organization built on espionage and secrets.”

“Either way,” Steve said, “we can’t make a move until we’re sure.”

“When do we tell Fury?” Natasha asked.

Steve looked at her. “Not until we’re sure.”

“He could help us _be_ sure,” Natasha said.

“If you want to tell him we think his high security organization is under attack because people are acting weird and we’ve got a gut feeling, be my guest.”

“He knows a thing or two about gut feelings.”

They didn’t tell Fury. They continued working silently and by themselves. One of those two things ended up being a mistake.

When Steve came home to his apartment one night, he couldn’t see the floor through broken glass and overturned furniture. It was a disaster zone. His lamps broken, his shelves emptied, their contents carpeting the floor, his kitchen cupboards and fridge flung wide open, the counters cleared in what looked like one angry sweep.

He closed the door behind him, saving the outside world from witnessing the ruins past his doorway. Glass crunched under his feet. He moved forward towards the back wall. Beside the window, there was spray paint coating the wallpaper, dried and formed into letters. He pressed a few fingers to the black paint.

BACK OFF, they screamed at him. Beside the final F there was a puncture in the dry wall.

Somebody was angry.


	6. Six.

Clint kicked his way through the rubble of Steve’s apartment. Steve had turned one of the barstools back on its feet and was sitting on it, arms crossed.

“They really went all out,” Clint said. He moved towards the spray painted wall. “They weren’t looking for anything, though,” he said. “They just wanted to shake you up.” He ran a finger along the edge of the hole in the wall. “If I were you, Cap, I would clean up a bit, buy some new lamps, and get some pizza.”

Steve was staring fixedly at a shattered lamp on the floor. Miraculously, its light bulb had survived the attack. “They unlocked my door,” he said.

A pause. Then, “Look,” Clint said, “you join the military, and you learn to follow order. It’s what you do. You join SHIELD, and you learn not to trust people. It’s what you do.” He picked his way back towards Steve, stopping halfway, not entering Steve’s downcast line of sight. 

“Natasha and me, we’ve gotten over it. Maybe you should too.”

The next day, walking around Triskelion made Steve feel light headed. There was a buzzing across every part of him. Eyes dragged knives across his skin. His mouth was glued shut. His hands had no coffee to hold.

The unlocked door sat heavily in every limb of his body.

There was a certain kind of distrust that grew from being surrounded by war.

Clint didn’t say anything to him. Maria didn’t acknowledge him. Natasha was nowhere to be seen.

Something in him felt empty and panicked at the same time.

He crawled his way to Fury.

“Romanoff beat you to it,” Fury said. “About a week ago,” he added.

Steve felt a jolt that had nothing to do with surprise.

“I want to explain something to you about us,” Fury continued. He watched Steve from his seat. Behind him, the sky was turning gray. “We’re an unorthodox organization, so we have to function in unorthodox ways. You’re a very straight forward kind of guy and I respect the hell out of that, but sometimes there isn’t a place for that kind of attitude. I think you know that.”

The words were thick, running through Steve’s ears and mind with a slow tickle.

Fury leaned down, unlocked a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a thick manila envelope. He opened the cover. Steve let his eyes drop to the now visible first page. It was a standard employee record with a small colored photograph stapled to the corner.

“Ryan Free has a long military history,” Fury said. He looked at Steve. “You know that.” He looked back at the file, flipped through a few sheets of printed paper. “About two months ago, there was contact made with him by an underground terrorist organization based out of New Zealand. They got their hands on some pretty familiar technology.” Fury flipped over the page he was on and spread out a few photographs on the edge of his desk.

Steve gravitated forward and touched a finger to the edge of one depicting a familiar blue glow. “How….?”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out,” Fury said. “This organization is a bunch of nobodies, but they somehow got a hold of this and set their sites on us.” He pulled the photographs back and returned them. “Ever since they made contact with Free, they’ve been expanding within the lower divisions of SHIELD. We thought they were building a steady base to work from, trying to work their way up to high divisions and, eventually, all of SHIELD. Little people tend to have big ambitions. But, instead, they stayed small and started snooping around the Bottom Zone.”

“You knew about all of this….”

“They started controlling people via the same means we assume they used on Free.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“We’re seeing how it’s playing out.”

“Playing out,” Steve repeated. “Maria—”

“Is being watched by completely competent and highly trained agents that were here the last time we had a disaster like this. As is Romanoff,” he added, “who you obviously do not know as well as you claim to.”

“Natasha?”

“Currently in the Bottom Zone.”

Steve tensed. “Doing what?”

“Looking for that officer that beat you down.”

Steve left immediately.

His feet carried him out of the office and into the elevator. The elevator dropped. He had no way to override the system and force it past the other floors that held workers waiting for the same transportation. He chewed the inside of his mouth and waited and waited.

The second the elevator hit the underground levels, it flung itself down faster, stopped smoothly, and opened to a quiet floor. Steve felt the silence like shivers on his skin. The elevator door slid closed with a small breeze behind him. He could hear his own breathing, heavy with anxiety.

He wanted it to be loud. He wanted there to be something to run into, some disaster to jump towards. He didn’t want it to be silent, to be empty, foreboding, and demanding of him in all the wrong ways.

He started forward.

Doors passed him by.

Seconds passed him by.

Footstep after footstep.

He made it a dozen more steps before the door next to him slammed open, clipping him on the arm. He felt the metal scrape him. Then Natasha was on him, grabbing his injured arm, pulling him harshly, deeper down the hallway.

He thought he herd her yell something like “run”, something like “move, move, move”, but he was too preoccupied with keeping up with her. She had let go of his arm and trusted him to take care of himself.

Behind them, footsteps pounded. Steve tried to count the number by the noises. He caught at least two pairs of feet. Then a voice that scraped like barbed wire across his ears.

“Steve!” Maria screamed.

Instinctively, he jolted, stopped, turned.

Natasha was pulling him again, her fingers digging into his scraped arm with fury. “I said _move_ , Rogers!”

Steve could see who was running after them now. Casey Way, the security guard, a wince on her face every time her right foot hit the ground, her hair no longer tied back. Next to her, Maria Hill. Behind them, a man that Steve didn’t immediately recognize.

Natasha was still pulling on him.

“Steve, it’s her.” Maria’s words were rushed. The group of three had halted now. They stood a few feet away. Maria’s voice was loud against the walls.

“Free got a hold of alien tech and he’s controlling Maria, Way, and a number of other people within SHIELD in the same way Loki controlled Clint,” Natasha said. Her voice was razor sharp. No nonsense. Steve swallowed hard.

“You think someone with alien technology would go after nobody security guards?” Maria asked. “You think they would ignore targets like the Black Widow and Hawkeye to get a hold of someone in charge of patrolling hallways?”

“They would if those hallways were surrounded by top secret information that they thought nobody would miss,” Natasha snapped at Maria.

“Where do you think she was when she was gone for a week, Steve?” Maria asked. She looked directly at him. “Why do you think she immediately wanted Barton in on your plan?”

Steve swallowed again and set his jaw. He planted his feet, closed his fist, and spun. Natasha caught the punch and dug her nails into his skin.

“What are you _doing_?” she hissed. “You think it’s _me_?”

Steve kept his voice lowered. “You take Way; I’m going for Free. Knock Maria down if you have to but be careful.”

Natasha blinked, nodded microscopically, then pushed him back with half her strength. Steve let the force carry him backwards towards the group of three, planted his feet again, and spun for a second time.

Maria wasn’t as quick to react as Natasha. Steve saw her eyes widen for a fraction before he ducked around her and barreled towards the man, Ryan Free, that was still standing in the back.

Free barely dodged Steve’s hit. He slammed himself against the wall and immediately pushed away from it. He made a move to retreat further down the hall and reached for something under his shirt. Steve tried to control the momentum from his lunge, but skidded against the tiled floor. He stumbled, pulled himself up, lunged again for Free’s arm. The second Steve got a grip, he yanked, pushed on Free’s other shoulder, and held his arm behind his back at a painful angle.

Free cursed and tried to pull free then cursed again when the movement only brought more pain to his twisted arm. He fell still.

Steve let a breath out and then felt something hard against the back of his head.

“Let go,” Maria said. Her gun rested firmly against Steve’s skull. “We didn’t want to involve you in this,” she said. “This is your fault for putting your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Who’s in control?” Steve asked. His voice felt hard against his own throat. He hoped it sounded that way too.

“No one you know or ever need to know,” she said.

Steve wanted to twist and see what sort of situation Natasha was in. He hoped it wasn’t the same one as him.

“Nick Fury knows we’re here,” Natasha said and Steve was relieved to hear her voice, steady and calm.

“Nick Fury is busy, I’m sure,” Maria said.

“But I’m not.”

The metal was gone from Steve’s head. He ducked to the floor immediately, taking Free with him. There was a shot. The noise pierced Steve’s ears. He watched Clint holding Maria with his around around her neck, muscles tensed. Her hands gripped at his arm, digging her nails in. Clint pulled an arrow from his quiver and Steve winced as he jabbed the flattened tip on to Maria’s stomach. Her body convulsed like she’d been struck by a taser and went limp.

Clint looked at Steve. “Taser arrow,” he said, a bit of surprise to his tone. “Super useful.”

Natasha had gone directly to the Bottom Zone when she had come in that day. Clint had already told her what had happened to Steve’s apartment the night before. They had both gone down together and split off partway down the hall to cover more ground. Natasha had found them first, rifling through newer shelves with more recently scrapped information. She hadn’t had time to get more than a word out to Clint via radio before she’d been spotted and attacked.

Steve had shown up only a minute and a half into the confrontation.

Once the three had been securely apprehended, Fury and a handful of higher security supervisors that had already been checked and screened, took them elsewhere to, hopefully, be returned to normal.

Steve went home immediately. Standing in a crowd of confused SHIELD agents with Fury watching him did nothing for his nerves and exhaustion.

His apartment was a little cleaner. Most of the glass had been located and disposed of in an empty trashcan. The furniture had been returned to its rightful positions. He slid off his shoes and cracked his neck.

There was an empty bucket under his sink and a bundle of dollar store sponges somewhere in the bathroom. Steve grabbed both. He dumped dish soap and water into the bucket and stood in front of the graffiti on his wall. He soaked the first sponge, squeezed out excess water, and started to scrub.

A half hour into the job, there was a soft knock on his door. He dropped his sponge into the bucket and answered it.

Maria’s face had a few scratches. Her lip was cut. She looked tired, like she had just walked out of a hospital. Which she likely had.

“Hey.” Her voice croaked. “I, uh, heard your place was kind of a mess. I don’t, um, remember if I did that or not…”

Steve didn’t know if she was looking for an answer. Her eyes avoided his.

“But, um, if you need help, like, cleaning it, they told me I’m not crazy anymore.”

Something close to joy planted itself in Steve’s chest. Something soft like flower petals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a finished commission. If you'd like to contact me about getting a commission, there's information on my writing blog: worldoftygers.tumblr.com :)


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